Last time we were discussing the change that Augmented Reality has been bringing to the realm of everyday products and entertainment. Not only are your kids going to be choosing Band-Aids based on what mobile games they come with, the moves they bring to their junior high dances will probably come from the video games they played.
As if that’s not enough, this week brings even more drastic changes that will allow us not only to connect more with our gaming universe, but will enable us to connect our other favorite universes to that one. More so, as we will learn, the audience appeal of video games and the consoles they run on may be about to change faster than we would have ever anticipated.
In case you missed it, last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (commonly referred to as E3), creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker of the television smash South Park unveiled a massive show-based RPG written entirely by the duo. Featuring brand new, in depth dialogue and specific characters from over 200 episodes, the game promises to submerge characters in the world of South Park like never before.
Even more remarkable than the game’s paper statistics is the approach taken by the creators and the developing company. The opening of the game’s trailer places you as the new member of the shows’ 4 main characters, in which you must first earn their acceptance in order to save South Park.
The game is currently in development with the company Obsidian, who were approached directly by the creators after establishing the company established itself amongst major players in the RPG world through such titles as 2010’s “Fallout: New Vegas.”
Obsidian, which was created from the destruction of Black Isle Studios in 2003, comprises much of the team responsible for the rest of the legendary “Fallout” series. “New Vegas” pick up in 2281 in the post-apocalyptic world, this time based outside of Las Vegas and about 100 square miles surrounding it, making for a massive game with unbelievable detail.
Much like its sister title Skyrim, a similarly released blockbuster from the same publisher, the “Fallout” series provides an amazingly detailed and realistic portrayal of the journeys of the main character. Nearly every object in the game is in play, and every action by the player is monitored by those surrounding him. Computer terminals can be hacked, locks can be picked (by finding bobby pins), drinking whiskey affects your attributes and you can even use workbenches to convert your ammunition type if you found the right sized empty shells. If you become a hero by helping out a town, you can help yourself to things lying around, but pickpocket the locals or steal too many things, and you may find yourself “vilified”. The game includes hundreds of towns, settlements, and outposts, many of which are run by the dozens of warring gangs, which the player must ally with or fight against.
Now imagine that with South Park.
After the premier, Parker and Stone appeared on stage to discuss the new project, saying “We got approached a couple of years ago to do a South Park game and the only thing that really interested us was if we could make a game that felt like you were in an episode of South Park… we worked with Obsidian… they showed up at our office, they played a demo for Trey and I and we started running around… it was just like the show”. Trey commented, “we’ve spent a lot of time for the first time just mapping out how the actual town is”, and, in the game, “you’re the fifth of the four boys and you’re trying to become cool”.
While the gaming world has taken many approaches to include our favorite movies and TV shows, today’s gaming experience has opened up new doors of possibility and user connection. Imagine deep and hysterical dialogue from all the characters, where the responses you choose depict the out come of the game. Players for the first time will be able to roam the whole town freely, and the creators are even working on integrating motion and voice recognition so that players will be further able to interact with the South Park world, even getting to berate Cartman when he gets out of line.
In previous gaming efforts for South Park, and similarly for most TV shows/movies, productions offered merely themed side games that put the most detail possible into an entirely different game. Now the show is the game, and the game, is the show. The objectives are like an episode and the dialogue is responsive to your reactions and gameplay style. The objective is not so much to beat a game but to complete the episode; and as bigger bonus for the cult-like sea of fans, players can finally see the entire town as conceived by the creators of the game. So what does this mean for the rest of the world?
Growing up surrounded by video games, it was always easy to understand why they may not appeal to adults like they did to me. Points, bonus games, and plumbers shooting around through tubes to save a princess and her mushroom friends was hard for an adult to concern themselves with. However, when I was introduced to Obsidian’s “Fallout: New Vegas” last year, the first thing that came to mind was how much my grandfather would have loved it! Forget points and plumbers (there are points, though) this game lets you venture through the Nevada wastelands as a lone stranger battling beasts and outlaw gangs while scavenging for food, water, and ammunition and while dealing/bartering/lying your way through the post apocalyptic world. Like a complete life-adventure simulator, the gamer is challenged with real world problems like survival, negotiation and politics; like living out an old western with way more to do than you would ever find there. For an older person with limited mobility, I can’t personally imagine something more liberating, and this is just one of multiple gaming titles featuring these types of capabilities; the genre has recently spawned some of the most popular titles in the gaming world.
If we can finally make games that capture the true feeling of being in your favorite shows/movies, and we have reached gaming levels that finally appeal to the adult world, then we may soon be seeing new markets of gamers opening up. It is obvious that the average age of gamers will be growing due to the aging of 70’s and 80’s born gamers, but as we see more realistic reality simulation, we may also see an accelerated jump in this number as TV/Movie-based video games begin appealing to fans more than the bonus content of their DVD’s.
In the next four to five years we may be seeing an even larger shift to video gaming systems than ever. The most recent generation of gaming consoles provides us with a DVD player, Netflix, a web browser and more. Now imagine if the cast of Friends, Seinfeld, or the Simpsons got together and created life-simulating versions of the television shows, with tons of dialogue recorded by all the cast members. All of a sudden you have tons of 30-50 year olds in the market for a Playstation or Xbox. While producers may be wise to wait for the next generation of systems to come out (especially for the real life shows), a wisely timed launch of some of these adult-appealing titles in the early stages of the new systems could do wonders in creating popularity and demand amongst older consumers.
As an added bonus to the augmented experience of your favorite shows and movies in near future of gaming, the potential benefits for children are even larger than those for adults. We haven’t even considered the kids market yet, but just imagine how much faster your kids will learn how to read when saving the city with Spongebob depends on it! Further, with expandable media, if a child is lacking in certain subjects, game companies can make add-ons to the child’s favorite game to tailor to whatever areas the child needs to work on. Instead of little Billy being behind in math, you could download an extension that makes his journeys with Spongebob more math oriented, with the capabilities to mix in other languages, historical facts or more!
What will the next few years bring? Dora the Explorer slipping Japanese phrases into her bilingual dialogue? A James Bond game that requires secret agent-like swagger with the ladies? Senior citizen Halo tournaments? Ok, maybe no senior gaming battles for another decade or so, but for the other two, definitely.
What we will definitely see is the ability of all three gaming major gaming systems (Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation) to appeal to much broader audiences than they all previously thought possible. This generation of systems established the gaming console as a multi-purpose household media tool; the next one will build upon that foundation and add media enhancement like never before. While we can’t be sure how the appeal of each system will change in the next generation, we can be very confident that the games themselves may have much more to do with it than ever before.
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